In
this presentation Indian-American artist/scholar
Shanti Pillai will discuss her work as co-creator of
a multicultural adaptation of Kalidasa’s play,
Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection, in
Havana, Cuba in 2008-09. The piece was the result
of an intensive artistic dialogue between Shanti, a
bharatanatyam dancer and contemporary performance
artist, and Cuban actor, Alexis Diaz de Villegas.
Performed by two actors and three musicians, this
version of Sakuntala moved in and out of
different languages and various acting styles. It
was as much an exploration of ways in which
principles of Indian theater could be invested into
new forms as it was an effort to portray the
unlikely cultural juxtapositions that formed a
natural and commonsense part of the creators’
everyday life together.

Shanti will reflect on this creative process from
the perspective of both aesthetic and
socio-political concerns. At issue were questions
such as how to make something contemporary based on
a two thousand year old text, and how to integrate
disparate languages and theatrical vocabularies into
a work of beauty with few material resources. These
aesthetic concerns were intimately related to
matters of broader social import which ranged from
the need to become aware of the kinds of readings
that Cuban audiences make of cultural difference, to
navigating the bureaucratic processes which
implement official cultural policy in a socialist
system. All of this was in turn framed by the
fraught relations between the United States and
Cuba, the broad contradictions of which both enabled
the project to take form even as they rendered it a
seeming impossibility. Shanti will illustrate her
discussion with images from this unique production.

Shanti Pillai is an Indian-American artist and
academic who has lived and worked in New York, South
India, and various places in Latin America. She
holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York
University. She was a Visiting Professor in Global
Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, where she taught
courses about globalization, identity politics, and
performance and later worked as the Resident
Director of the Sarah Lawrence College Program in
Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2009 she will serve as
Director of Princeton University’s program in Cuba.
Her academic research interests focus on the
globalization of Indian performance and spiritual
practices.

She is also a Bharatanatyam dancer receiving her
training from Nandini Ramani of Chennai and
Priyamvada Sankar of Montreal, both senior disciples
of T. Balasaraswati. She is a contemporary
performance artist and a modern dancer, performing
widely with the dance-theater company el Frente de
Danza Independiente in Ecuador.

saturday 18th july
6.30 pm sarangi recital by Murad Ali

Many
years ago Sir Yehudi Menuhin spoke about the sarangi
as “not
only the authentic and original Indian bowed
stringed instrument but the one which most
poignantly, and in the hands of Ram Narayan, most
revealingly expresses the very soul of Indian
feeling and thought.”

Carved from a single block of tun
(red cedar) wood , the sranagi has almost 40
stringsgiving it the timbre and resonance that most
closely resembles the human voice. Notoriously
difficult to play and tune, the sarangi has
traditionally been used primarily for accompanying
singers (shadowing the vocalist's improvisations),
but in recent times it has become recognised as a
solo instrument used for full
raga development.

The young sarangi player Murad Ali,
who performs this evening is a sixth generation
sarangi player, trained under his grandfather Ustad
Siddique Ahmad Khan and father Ustad Ghulam Sabir
Khan. His ancestors, were all renowned sarangi
players, musicologists and gurus of the Moradabad
Gharana.

Murad Ali began his performing career
at the age of ten, Murad Ali won the first prize in
the All India Radio national music competition held
in 1992. An 'A' grade artiste of the All India
Radio, he has also been a frequent performer at
several music festivals in India and abroad.
Including the World Music Festivals in Austria,
Holland and France. He has also performed in
England, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Japan, U.S.A.
Tunisia, Morocco, South America, Egypt, Jordan,
Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

friday 17th july6.30 pm “Subaltern classical - The
sounds of the classical little guys through time” An
illustrated talk by Nicholas Hoffland of
performances of music by western classical composers
through time

For
every Bach, Mozart or Haydn, there have been several
hundred composers whose body of work did not catch
or endear itself to the public imagination. Some who
were wildly successful, vanished by different
degrees from the public ear and view after their
lifetime.

This talk revisits some of these
subalterns of classical music to enjoy their work
afresh… to enable them to march alongside the
titans… in some dimension.